DISCIPLINARY ACTION

At last the total war which the Crimson urged from the beginning of its campaign has been launched against the tutorial schools. There can be no mistaking the intention back of the rule which the Faculty passed yesterday making a student who patronizes a tutoring school "liable to disciplinary action." The half-way reforms and the moral disapproval hastily improvised last year have been reinforced by a vote recognizing that the value of a Harvard degree is impaired by the existence of shops where money substitutes for the cost of intellectual labor.

the rule is to go into effect immediately, and this raises the question of how it is to be enforced. The Faculty has not yet stated the means it intends to use in making the vote effective, but the precedents of Harvard's liberal policy toward its students make it probable that the cruder forms of police power will not be used. Yard cops will not be stationed at cram parlor doors to seize the Bursar's cards of men who, from choice or apparent necessity, continue to violate the will of the Faculty. It is very likely that tell-tale glibness and vague answers to specific questions will betray students who have not done their own work. This method of detection has already proved successful in History 1, and it is probable that the previous penalty of a cut in the paper's grade will be stiffened.

The possible objection that the ruling violates students' liberties is answered by the fact that there are some conditions of college life which the Faculty can and must control. One of these is contained in the parietal rules. At least as good a case can be put up for control of the circumstances under which Harvard's A.B. degree is granted. The Faculty has determined that it should be honestly earned by everyone, and not purchased.

Having thus outlawed commercial tutoring, the Faculty is faced with increased responsibility in regard to the efficiency of its teaching. All the faults of badly organized courses and poor instruction] which the Crimson held were cloaked behind the tutoring schools are now laid bare. The crutch of cramming knocked from under it, undergraduate teaching must stand on its own feet. For students genuinely in need of assistance the Bureau of Supervision stands ready, and it must be perfectly efficient. With its old cancer thus cut out by a final surgical stroke the College can concentrate on the endless struggle to raise the quality of its teaching.